Fat chance: Are your friends or family making you gain weight?

Take a good, long look across the dinner table the next you and your family have gathered together for some sort of sit down, formal meal?
What exactly do you see?
Chances are if you're struggling with your weight, eating right or overall health and wellness, your family (and friends for that matter) might be as well. Studies have shown that overeating, bad eating habits in general and issues with controlling your weight aren't just a result of lack of exercise or you specifically making bad choices.
Those shortcomings also can come as a result of how you were raised as a child, the eating habits and tendencies of your parents or the kinds of food you've always been exposed throughout the course of your life.
Assuming that your eating habits are all your own is a bit short sighted, and those who scoff at the idea your family can't influence how you eat don't understand how habits are formed at a very young age and are hard to break. If your house never had fruit, vegetables or perhaps the right kind of snacks, who's to say you'll know or even want to do anything differently.

Your friends are just as much of an indicator as well. Often, social situations are underscored by going out to eat. That might have you eating three or four nights in a restaurant, and often down the path of least (and tastiest) resistance and wanting to order dessert, for example, or something on a particular menu that might not be the healthiest.
Beyond food, you also have to look at various stress you've been exposed to and how it relates to your eating habits. You wouldn't be the first person to be in the midst of a family issue, be it illness or money woes, and begin to let that frustration bleed out into how you go about eating.
In the end, what you eat ultimately is determined you making that choice and consuming a food that isn't going to do your health or waistline any favors. But to assume that those choices would never potentially come from a place that isn't necessarily your own mindset is being incredibly naive and putting a blanket statement on a subject that deserves much more scrutiny.

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